Russian Literary Heritage Walking Tour (Self Guided), St. Petersburg

If you're an ardent fan of Russian literature, St. Petersburg is undoubtedly your dream destination. Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Nabokov and many other Russia's literary greats have blessed this city with their presence – born, lived, worked, or set their characters here. To a great extent, St. Petersburg is a huge stone book, whose pages have been created by prominent Russian men and women of letters.

At times it may feel like you can’t even turn a corner without finding yourself on the street where this or that seminal literary figure once lived. Many of their former dwellings are now turned into apartment museums: part-shrine to the iconic occupant, part-memorial to the era gone by.

There’s Pushkin Apartment Museum (Naberezhnaya Reki Moyki 12), where the poet wrote many of his masterpieces and died following a duel in 1837; the Dostoevsky Museum (Kuznechnyy Pereulok 5/2), opened almost a century after the author penned The Brothers Kazamarov within its walls; and the Nabokov House Museum (Bol’shaya Morskaya Ulitsa 47), where one of Russia’s most famous exiles and future author of Lolita was born (the apartment now houses his manuscripts and butterfly collection), to mention but a few.

If you wish to nose around these and other apartment museums, explore the localities that have inspired some of the world’s most famous writers and poets, or otherwise find out more about St. Petersburg’s literary heritage, take this self-guided walking tour.